Petra Höfer

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Petra Höfer, December 2016, Madrid
Petra Höfer (2016)

Petra Höfer (born February 10, 1963 in Bremen ; † June 6, 2017 in Dortmund ) was a German journalist and filmmaker . She was best known for television series and movies like Mondän! , Under German roofs , expedition into the brain , Terra X: Germany from above or migratory birds - scouts in distant worlds .

Life

Petra Höfer was born in Bremen in 1963, but moved to Dortmund with her parents as a child because her father took a managerial job at a brewery there. She has an older sister. Höfer began doing gymnastics and swimming as a child and remained an enthusiastic athlete throughout her life.

After graduating from high school, she began studying German , sports science and social sciences in Münster , where she met her future husband Freddie Röckenhaus in 1982, before the first day of the semester , who was also her permanent co-author of over 70 documentary and docudrama productions should be.

After passing the state examination at the Ruhr University in Bochum , Höfer first worked as an author for daily newspapers and trendy magazines, became an editor at Taz ( Die Tageszeitung ) in Bremen , freelance writer for Taz in Berlin , Die ZEIT and ZEITmagazin in Hamburg and graduated an internship at Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Cologne . When WDR she worked after the internship as a writer for the political magazine Monitor , conducted by Klaus Bednarz and made the first long television documentaries, such as on Greenpeace and the European Parliament .

In 1994 she founded the film and television production company colourFIELD together with Röckenhaus in Munich , with which the two moved back to their native Dortmund in 1997 . Höfer has received several awards at home and abroad for her work as an author, director and producer, most of the couple's films were premiered in the evening programs of ARD , ZDF and Arte and regularly won large audiences there. Film series such as Expedition into the Brain ( Beautiful Minds ), Empire of Viruses or The Automatic Brain have been sold and translated in up to 80 countries. Ranks like the Grimmepreis-nominated Chic! ' Tropenfieber or California Dreamin' are among the most repeated documentary series on German television. Blood and Games - The Doping Trap received enthusiastic reviews and was awarded the German Television Prize.

Your film Germany from Above is one of the most popular documentaries of all time in German cinema. The film has often been shown with a soundtrack played live by symphony orchestras . Germany from Above was premiered in Germany's largest cinema, the Lichtburg in Essen, with Boris Salchow's music being played live along with the film by the Essen Philharmonic.

Höfer is a role model for many young women in the documentary film sector, also because she did not limit herself to the journalistic and artistic part of film work, but also sought economic control over her work as a producer and film entrepreneur. Höfer refused to produce for commercial television that was interrupted by advertising . In addition to special film-aesthetic qualities, their films often had an environmental and nature-protecting claim. She dealt extraordinarily intensively with innovative technical topics of film production, for example with compositing , computer animation , time lapse , extreme slow motion . Reviews of her films in newspapers praise the opulent, elegant imagery that has visually expanded and renewed the documentary genre. The excessive use of film music was sometimes controversially discussed by more traditional documentary filmmakers, but younger viewers in particular enthusiastically checked the music lists with the titles played.

Since her youth, Höfer had been an avowed supporter of the Bundesliga soccer club Borussia Dortmund , about whom she and Röckenhaus made the sympathetic, but at the same time commercially critical, ARD film Die Profis . She followed almost all of her club's home games live in Dortmund's Westfalenstadion .

The Höfer-Röckenhaus and the authors have lived in Margaret River on Australia's southwest coast for around two months of the year since 2000 . Höfer was a keen surfer.

Petra Höfer died unexpectedly in the street on June 6, 2017 of ventricular fibrillation of the heart. She was 54 years old. At the time of her death, she and Röckenhaus and her team had started her next project, the international co-production Russia from Above .

ZDF commemorated Höfer with an obituary on the station's website: “She was a master of the picture and a first-class language artist. Your passion, creativity and strength have touched and inspired us for so many years. (…) Thank you Petra - for all the years in which we have been able to work with you. And for your radiant smile with which you filled every room. "

The journalist and President of the German Church Congress Hans Leyendecker gave the funeral speech for Petra Höfer and said among other things: "In the journalist profession and in the artist scene in general, there are many people who are downright crazy about telling their biography. Awards, titles "Gates. Heroic stories. All of them can be immediately enumerated. Such people seem to care more about their résumé than their lives, just push a button and they'll be coddling enthusiastically about themselves. Has someone who is in this church today." , have you ever seen Petra Höfer rattling off her résumé? "

Many films by Höfer and Röckenhaus are permanently available in the ZDFmediathek . Most of Höfer's productions are also available on DVD . Many of their films are available on commercial streaming services in the US and Germany .

Filmography

Awards

Petra Höfer was awarded, among others, with:

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung: As You Like It , Review by Hans Hoff
  2. ^ German TV Prize, winner Petra Höfer
  3. ↑ Die WELT: Simply die the patriotic love death , review by Eckhard Fuhr
  4. ^ Süddeutsche Zeitung: Fairy tale film , review by Claudia Tieschky
  5. ↑ Arte on Petra Höfers Germany from above
  6. ↑ Annual visitor numbers FFA
  7. ^ Premiere report WAZ Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung
  8. ↑ Laudation for the Heinz Sielmann Prize 2017 at the Green Screen Festival ( Memento of the original from December 31, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.greenscreen-festival.de
  9. ↑ colourFIELD website
  10. ↑ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: The early bird holds the course , film review by Jan Russezki
  11. ↑ Media correspondence: Boundless freedom , film review by Manfred Riepe
  12. ^ Obituary for the death of Petra Höfer on ZDF online
  13. ↑ Media correspondence about Höfer's film The Bean Counters (1995)
  14. ↑ "Deutschland von oben" in favor of viewers in the front / ZDF celebrates 30 years of "Terra X" with a special film request, July 25, 2012
personal data
SURNAME Höfer, Petra
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist and filmmaker
DATE OF BIRTH February 10, 1963
PLACE OF BIRTH Bremen
DATE OF DEATH June 6, 2017
Place of death Dortmund